♫ Music ♫ Music is deeply rooted into people's emotions.

Like when you get goose bumps or when your hair raises on your arm when someone sings a certain note and that for me is a big part of the human experience.

♫ Music ♫ The music scene in Baltimore is one of the most beautiful things I know.

The people here, they love art and they love doing it.

There's something about sharing your passion with like-minded people that pumps that love into this world.

♫ Music ♫ This is like magic.

This is like alchemy.

That spontaneity is what sparks a lot of creativity.

Co Lab is speed dating for songwriters.

We get musicians and artists and writers together and put them in random groups of four and give them a minimal prompt where they're given up to 15 minutes to write a song.

♫ Music ♫ I'll give you whatever theme or whatever concept we're going to be working at.

Sometimes it's magnet tiles, sometimes it's wordplay and sometimes it's based on whatever event’s going on or whatever holiday is coming up.

Seven minutes.

Seven minutes left.

After the round is over, everyone convenes in the common room where there's a stage and then they play that song for the other groups and then rotate and do it all over again.

And you'll do this four times in a night.

♫ Music ♫ We had our sessions originally at the Night Owl Gallery in Station North, and then we moved right around the corner to the Watermelon Room, which is a recording studio.

We've been able to get rappers and hip hop artists, but also people from like a folk background and people from a more soul, funk, jazz background and rock, punk.

I'd say it's pretty diverse.

- Just give us like a little nod - A little nod.

Alright.

- So we know to where to head back in.

♫ Music ♫ I remember coming home and thinking like that was the funnest experience I’ve ever had in the past at least five years making music.

It stirs that part of my brain a lot more because you have a goal and the goal is to write a song.

- We’ll see how seemlessly I can hop on the bass.

Just keep the groove going when I come over.

- That works.

That works.

♫ Music ♫ It really requires you to get out of your comfort zone and just go.

And it’s hard to do that.

So many things could go wrong.

But what if it doesn't?

You build connections, you build ideas for songs.

Those opportunities are there every single time you go.

♫ Music ♫ I took a break from music for a few years.

I had severe writer's block.

So I was really excited to get back into, like, music.

Doing Co Lab kind of just switched that creativity back on in my brain.

Oh, I like that.

One of the songs that I wrote with some people in Co Lab, we actually went outside of Co Lab to record it.

What we're doing is just not limited to Co Lab.

It's like we're able to share this potentially with the world.

♫ Music ♫ The cycle is the bigger framework, and each cycle is about three roughly four months.

It builds into the finale event where we take musicians, that we already know everybody loves working with that were voted by their peers and gave them 90 minutes to write three songs.

And then they immediately perform it to a live audience.

♫ Music ♫ We use that to pull participants for our Showcase, which is a public event that we have.

Now outside of Co Lab you have three months to write a 40 minute set.

♫ Music ♫ I was blessed with an opportunity to be in one of those groups.

We performed at Monument City Brewing Company in July of 2024.

I was able to perform an individual set and then each of the other members in my group also got to perform an individual set.

♫ Music ♫ Anxiety with performing has been something I've been working on.

Co Lab has helped me to build further progress towards overcoming it just because of the amount of practice you get and then also the people in the group are really supportive as well.

That really helped me to come out of my comfort zone and to expand my creative abilities.

♫ Music ♫ I was really struggling to find a music community in Baltimore.

It felt like I was kind of doing this alone.

That was until I met all these great musicians.

So we can have this community as opposed to what felt like each musician existing in their own bubble.

Now that we have this hub, I’m starting to see the Baltimore music scene come alive.

♫ Music ♫ Music brings life to the local community.

And creating an opportunity to kind of highlight that, I think shows a kind of vibrance in a city or in a community.

I came up with the idea for Co Lab in the fall of 2023.

I want to do something different, something that's like fresh and kind of inspiring.

Even though I kind of knew it was going to turn into more, I didn't know what path or how we were going to get there.

it's really blossomed into becoming part of the bigger artistic community in Baltimore right now.

This area of Baltimore, specifically Station North, there's so much that is going on in terms of the visual arts, the music, but also, the bar and restaurant scene.

What we have to offer here is super competitive.

And in the spirit of Collaboration Laboratory, Lee and I have been working to pair musicians with venues that are participating with these monthly Art Walks.

It helps to activate the space.

Folks are engaging with not just the visual art, but they're also engaging with with the musicians that are playing too.

♫ Music ♫ It gives them an opportunity to show themselves to a bigger audience.

♫ Music ♫ In the last year, I came from not knowing everyone to knowing a lot of beautiful people.

Thanks for that, Lee.

And your intentional community you’ve created here.

♫ Music ♫ As with many of my artist friends, I struggle with mental illness and also physical illnesses and so I really need a place to escape.

When you hop into a group for Collab Lab, you have a short amount of time to build safe space.

And it’s so cool to see how people celebrate each other.

Although this has much of a workshop formula, it's nicely emphasized that we come with what we are.

We're learning to do with what we have together.

♫ Music ♫